3 Knowledge Management in an IT-Help Desk environment. Submitted by Gunnar Ingi Ómarsson to the University of Skövde as a final year project towards the degree of B.Sc. in the School of Humanities and Informatics. The project has been supervised by Mikael Berndtsson I hereby certify that all material in this final year project which is not my own work has been identified and that no work is included for which a degree has already been conferred on me. Signature:

4 Knowledge Management in an IT-Help Desk environment. Gunnar Ingi Ómarsson Abstract The help desk serves as the first support level for solving IT problems but sometimes they have their own problems. These problems can be linked to the lack of access to the right knowledge which could be solved by implementing knowledge management so that agents have all the knowledge they need available to them when they need it. There is statistical data available to confirm that, by implementing this knowledge management-centric approach, there is a significant improvement in throughput and reduced times spent on calls. Yet there seems to be that there is no research available to show us the cultural, process, resource and responsibility impact of knowledge management in this environment. This is the focus of this project and by creating a special knowledge management system prototype, for a working help desk, these aspects are analyzed. The results show a minimal culture barrier, more structured processes, better access to resources and increased responsibilities. Keywords: Knowledge management, Knowledge management systems, Help Desk

5 Index 1 Introduction Objectives Methods Analyze current processes and system in department Conceptually design a KMS Use the new KMS and analyze changes Background Knowledge management What is KM? Why use KM? Important concepts in KM Knowledge Management System Support levels Call centre vs. help Desk The job ticket Related work Knowledge Management for Call Centres Knowledge management-centric help desk: Specifications and performance evaluation The Company Author reflective bias Working environment Data Analysis Problems The Knowledge Management System Knowledge base Activities Technology Lessons learned KMS results and the prototype The knowledge base Activities I

7 1 Introduction In a perfect world, as customers, we could call a help desk; the agent would greet us as our close friend and solve our problem quickly and efficiently. But unfortunately we do not live in a perfect world so we seldom experience this scenario. Instead we have problems with these agents, such as: Waiting for long periods of time while the agent finds the right solution for our problem Waiting while the agent consults a colleague Waiting while the agent finds information about us or our company Get greeted with a standardized greeting where the agent wants to get rid of us as soon as possible Get stuck with an agent that has no knowledge of your company or your problem Being sent to a 2 nd level service agent and not understanding this agent due to overuse of technical terms And waiting for an agent to become available. The root of these problems can be found in a lack of knowledge. More and more problems are becoming solvable by 1 st level support (IT Help Desk). This means that there is more and more knowledge that these 1 st level support agents need to have. A dedicated, and ambitious, employee, in an IT-Help Desk department, would want to be able to assist his customers with as many problems as he can, as quickly and efficiently as possible. But how is this done? Knowledge management (KM) is a very good tool to achieve this goal. KM is providing the right knowledge, at the right time to the employee that needs it to perform a specific task (Aggestam, 2008). This is the abstract view of knowledge management. Knowledge is just one factor in all of this. The need for a learning culture within the organization is also quite significant. If members of an organization are not willing to be a part of a knowledge management system (KMS), it can be hard to implement. But what are the significant issues and changes that occur when implementing a KMS in this environment? Current work is very limited, articles like Knowledge management-centric help desk: specification and performance evaluation by Gonzales, Giachetti and Ramirez (2005) focuses mostly on statistical data and Knowledge management for call centers by James Robertson (2002) covers how to implement a KMS in the help desk environment. There are still questions that need answering regarding how KM impacts the help desk environment, i.e. What are the changes in the process flow?, Is there a cultural change among the agents? and How important is staff involvement in decision changes? Another problem can be found in the levels of support, as clear boundaries between these levels are getting more blurry. This brings up the question What does the help desk do? With the help of an IT-solution provider, and personal experience, these questions will be addressed and studied within this project. The Icelandic IT-solution provider Þekking hf. is a company that has a working help desk and is familiar with its problems and practices. This company showed great interest in being a case environment for this project. The author is an employee of the company, for over two and half years, and has extensive knowledge on the structure 1

8 and inner workings of their help desk. This company will thus act as a testing environment for the project. The aim of this project is to study the impact that a knowledge management system has on the help desk environment 1.1 Objectives In order to reach my aim I have broken the work down into three objectives. In the following sections I will cover them in more detail. Analyze current processes and system in department: Performing an analysis on current processes, workflow, resources, structure, culture, etc., within the company s help desk, should aid to find problematic issues in regards to KM in the environment. This will also be the comparison template for how things are currently done. Conceptually design a KMS: Using related work, and KM theory, a new KMS is conceptually designed. This KMS will hold steps that the help desk needs to take in order to be an efficient knowledge sharing unit. Use the new KMS and analyze changes: With the aid of the company the new KMS is used and results analyzed. This should produce a working view of how to use the KMS and its elements. Analysis will be focused on the changes within the environment before and after the proposed changes within the help desk. 2

9 2 Methods Different methods are used in order to reach the aforementioned objectives. These methods are explained in this chapter. 2.1 Analyze current processes and system in department As an employee of the company s help desk for over two and half year, and over six years of experience in customer service in the IT sector, analysis is done on the help desk based on the author s knowledge. To get an even better understanding, however, of the working help desk environment, which consists of 4 agents, a questionnaire will be sent to the agents. This questionnaire will give their perspective of the current processes, resources available as well as a little insight into the sharing mindset of the environment. Another questionnaire is sent to the department manager for a more managerial view. 2.2 Conceptually design a KMS A KMS is designed using related work and KM theory. To satisfactorily fit the environment the KMS will use applicable or modified procedures. The core of this KMS is based on the work from Knowledge management for call centres by James Robertson and further validated or developed using research on KM. 2.3 Use the new KMS and analyze changes Finally the designed system will be used, in close collaboration with the department manager, in a way that proposed changes to the help desk in question will be formulated and a prototype is created. This is then compared to previous analysis and examined giving a detailed change of event and impact. Proposed changes and prototype will be sent to the agents for their review. They will then answer questionnaires to engage their reactions in order to better analyze the cultural and procedural effect. These are the chosen methods in order to reach each of the objectives. They in turn will contribute to the main goal of achieving the aim of the project. The primary data is compiled from author s working experience in the environment and the answers to the questionnaires, which the author provided for the help desk employees, is complimentary data to back up author s knowledge. 3

10 3 Background It is easy to throw around words like knowledge management, knowledge management system and help desk, but that is not very useful if the reader has little information about these topics. This chapter aims to better explain the main concepts of this project as well as comprise information about the company that is working with the author and the author himself. 3.1 Knowledge management In this chapter a closer look is taken at KM; firstly what it is, then a few basic concepts within the field, followed by why we should be using KM and lastly explain KMS What is KM? Unfortunately there is no universal definition for KM. Although it is now a concept that is over 20 years old there seems to be no consensus for a unified definition. A few of these definitions are detailed below. Aggestam (2008) talks about knowledge management being the work that should provide the right knowledge, both tacit and explicit, to the organization s members that need it, so that they can do their work tasks better. In other words it is the practice of gathering knowledge, documenting it and then making it available for those in need. Meso and Smith (2002) describe KM as being the process of capturing an organization s expertise and intelligence in order to cultivate innovation through continued organizational learning. Wiig (1995) names four very important factors in managing knowledge: (1) find, create and exploit knowledge that is competitively important in order for the organization to obtain a leadership position; (2) managing the knowledge daily in an intelligent way cost efficiently without sacrificing quality; (3) build knowledge from assets within the organization; (4) make sure that knowledge is up-to-date and relevant. The common thread in these definitions is that KM is the process of capturing knowledge and disseminating it to the members of an organization. The result, of KM implementation, can differ, doing every day work processes more efficiently, finding new ways to solve every day problems or working faster due to more accessible knowledge. With multiple definitions of the concept within the field of KM it can become quite confusing for the reader. This project takes the position that it is the practice of capturing, codifying and disseminating knowledge to the right user for the right situation. This is the most abstract view of the process as there are multiple aspects that are included within this definition, i.e. making sure knowledge is relevant, accurate and up-to-date which would fall under the capturing process Why use KM? A businesses ability to stay competitive in its market is one of the most important aspects in order to stay in business. A competitive advantage largely results from innovation. Innovation often occurs when new knowledge is created and new knowledge is created in the organizational learning process (Meso and Smith, 2002). As mentioned before, the acquisition of new knowledge is among one of the processes of KM is therefore and thus KM is an important part of having a competitive edge. 4

11 3.1.3 Important concepts in KM Here we will take a look at a few concepts within the KM field of study. Among those concepts are the clarification of knowledge, the SECI model, cultural issues like the learning organization and knowledge management systems Knowledge Nonaka & Takeuchi (1995) categorized knowledge into two sets, tacit and explicit; these are then defined into another two categories, internal and external. A better clarification is as follows. Tacit knowledge is considered something that you know, something that is not documented in any way and often considered hard to explain. Internal tacit knowledge is often referred to as know how, things like looking left and right before crossing the street and checking the water temperature in the bathtub before going into it. External tacit knowledge, on the other hand, is like saving your work regularly and signing letters with your name. Explicit knowledge is the knowledge that has been documented, whether it is written on paper or stored on an electrical database. Internal explicit knowledge is the knowledge that has been documented but you know it without having to read it, can be something that someone else has told you, like the biblical Ten Commandments. External explicit knowledge is the documented knowledge that you have to acquire, like reading the instructions for your new electrical appliance. The individual knowledge is crucial for developing the organizational knowledge, but this organizational knowledge in not merely the sum of the individual knowledge (Bhatt, 2000). It is in fact a sum of multiple relationships between organization, its members, techniques and technologies it uses (Bhatt, 2000) SECI Model Nonaka and Takeuchi s (1995) SECI model is the process of making one member s tacit knowledge to another member s tacit knowledge by making it explicit first (see figure 3-1). It stands for Socialization, Externalization, Combination and Internalization. Travaille & Hendriks (2010) explain the concepts as follows: Socialization: Involving two or more individuals blending their mostly implicit insight to create new tacit knowledge. Externalization: Covers documenting this tacit knowledge to make it explicit. Can be done by creating analogies and metaphors. Combination: Combining the new explicit knowledge by adding, sorting, categorizing it into the existing knowledge base. Internalization: The act of making the codified explicit knowledge into new tacit knowledge. This can be achieved by learning-by-doing, goal-based training, etc. The SECI model is often referred to as the SECI learning spiral. This is due to it being continual and at each revolution of the spiral the total knowledge of the organization increases. 5

12 Learning organization Figure 3-1: Travaille and Hendrik s (2010) view of the SECI model. organizations where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning to learn together. (Senge, 1990, p.3) Peter Senge, the author of The Fifth Discipline, is one of the leading figures when it comes to the concept of the learning organization. This definition at the beginning of his book explains how learning organizations never stop trying to evolve their knowledge. That leaves one thing to consider. Is the concept of a learning organization a part of KM or is it the other way around? Aggestam (2008) actually devised a model of stages for achieving maturity as a learning organization (see figure 3-2). This model describes KM as a stage of the maturity process in becoming a learning organization, thus being a tool to use in this process. Organizational learning is the other step in this process, where organizational learning is when the learning of the individuals changes the organizational knowledge. She further defines that a learning organization is not an end-state; it is in fact an endless loop of this maturity process. One way to look at it is like picturing a waterslide. The goal is to reach the top, becoming a learning organization, but in order to do that you have to walk the steps all the way to the top, where the steps are KM and the act of walking is organizational learning. When you reach the top you slide down the waterslide and start it all over again. The basis for all of this is that the organization has a learning culture. The members of the organization have to have this sharing mindset, teaching and learning, and preferably be self motivated to have this mindset. 6

13 Figure 3-2 : Aggestam s (2008) model of Learning organization stages Knowledge Management System Knowledge management systems (KMS) share a problem with KM, there is no universal definition. Some say that there is no distinct difference between a KMS and an information system (IS) while others argue that these two concepts are completely unrelated. If we start by breaking down these two concepts, down to the core of their meaning, knowledge and information. What are the differences between knowledge and information? Bhatt (2001) proposes that knowledge and information are differentiated on the basis of interpretation. Without meaning, knowledge is information or data (Bhatt, 2001, p.2). Through certain actions such as combination and interpretation data becomes knowledge. These actions would be, data is collected and combined thus becoming information which gets interpreted into knowledge. Now taking another look at KMS and IS, Meso & Smith (2000) define an organizational KMS as a system that provides for the creation of new knowledge, the use of existing knowledge, and the finding of knowledge from internal and external sources. A KMS must then be a system that uses KM tools to achieve its specific goal of capturing, codifying and disseminating knowledge. This implies that a KMS can be designed without the use of information technology (IT), this is further supported by what Holsapple (2005) calls the exclusive view. The Wikipedia entry for IS states that it is any combination of IT and people s actions using these technologies to maintain operations, management and decision making. This implies that IT is always present in ISs. The problem here is the lack of unified definitions for these concepts. Researchers have to decide what their view is and define their work accordingly. 3.2 Support levels Support levels represent the levels in a technical support domain. These levels are usually defined by a company s needs or wants but according to the Technical support entry on Wikipedia there are usually three to four levels of support. These levels being as follows: Level 1: Initial support. Takes information from customer. Solves simple and straightforward problems and possibly using some knowledge management tool (Windley, 2001, p.4). Meant to handle 70% - 80% of user problems. Responsible for escalating unsolved problems to next level and, rarely, to level 3. Level 2: Handles escalations from level 1. More technically specialized personnel. Helps level 1 with solutions of problems. May handle, but not 7

14 limited to onsite repairs or replacement of different kinds of hardware components, use remote control tools to take over user s machine to perform troubleshooting or applying problem solution. Escalates remaining problems to next level. Level 3: The highest level in the three-tiered support model. Consist of experts in their respective fields. Handle the most complex of problems that the first two levels cannot solve. Usually have the same responsibilities as the level 2 technicians. Level 4: This is not a universally used level. This level often implies escalations to the point of involving hardware or software vendors outside the organization. Figure 3-3 : Support Levels The definition of this project for this 1 st support level is a mixture of the first two defined earlier. It proposes that the help desk does most of the remote work done by 2 nd support level. It also proposes that the support levels connect through Omnidirectional work flow (see figure 3-4) so work can be delegated back to lower tiers if the solution can be implemented by the help desk, thus being able to further grow the knowledge base and use the help desk to its full potential. 8

15 Figure 3-4 : Communication channels. Dotted lines represent rare communications Call centre vs. help Desk To begin with let us look at the call centre phenomenon. According to the Wikipedia entry a call centre is: a centralised office used for the purpose of receiving and transmitting a large volume of requests by telephone. The call centre handles both incoming calls as well as outgoing calls. Incoming calls are types of calls that are initiated by the customer, often to solve problems with a product. Outbound calls, on the other hand, are calls initiated by the agent where he is selling a product or conducting surveys, arrange meetings, distribute information and other things along those lines. Another concept in this field is the contact center. It has a broader definition that covers handling of s, faxes, live chat, letters, telephony, etc. etc. The help desk environment this project focuses on is somewhat a mixture of those two, though help desks are usually considered to be a version of a call centre. The project s help desk only handles technical problems that customers have, software and hardware. The only outbound calls to these customers are to inform them that a problem has occurred and the problem is being dealt with or that a problem has been fixed which the customer has reported. It also handles requests sent in by other mediums, which is mostly . As is with all customer support the help desk has to have capable agents that also possess people skills, have good sense of problem solving and realize that they are quite often the standard by which the company is judged. Speed, efficiency, quality and good interaction are the key ingredients to the customer being served, well. 9

16 3.2.2 The job ticket The job ticket is a service request that is entered into a system in order to document its progress. This allows for managers and employees to follow up on requests made, both in-house and customer initiated requests. In this day and age there are numerous software solutions to handle this and these software solutions allow for better control of these job tickets. Job tickets can be categorized and prioritized in many ways and this is usually designed by the company according to their standards, needs or wants. Gonzales et al. (2005) mentions four categories that a fortune 500 company uses. These are a good example of how these job tickets can be categorized, they are as following: 3.3 Related work Critical severity: A system or a major system component is down or unavailable to a substantial portion of the user community, or the user cannot conduct critical business operations that will result in a significant loss of revenue, profit, or productivity. High severity: A problem that causes a partial or potential system or application outage. Medium severity: A problem that must be resolved but does not impact the service level commitments of the information technology organization. The problem does not severely impede the user s ability to conduct business and/or it can be circumvented. Low severity: A low impact problem that does not require immediate resolution, as it does not directly affect the user s productivity, system or application availability. As was previously mentioned there has not been much work done on KM in the help desk environment. Although there is some work on the building and evolution of FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) in the help desk environment, like Behind the Help Desk: Evolution of a Knowledge Management System in a Large Organization by Halverson, Erickson and Ackerman (2004), which is not applicable to this project. FAQ is not applicable for this project as the help desks view this project takes is that the help desk is meant to assist clients directly and not by showing where they can find instructions to fix the problems themselves. Though this is the case at least two articles were found on the project s subject, each focusing on different aspects. The first one is an article written by James Robertson, who is a managing director for a KM consultancy company, the second one is written by Gonzáles et al. for the Department of Industrial and System Engineering, Florida International University. The following are reviews of these articles Knowledge Management for Call Centres The author, James Robertson, specializes in establishing knowledge management systems, information design, usability and XML development. With his article he talks about the key issues when implementing KM for Call centres. He breaks it down into two parts, the first one being how you manage your knowledge and the other being how to develop the KMS. Regarding managing your knowledge he writes about four processes and what they involve: 10

17 Identifying required information, with the help of employees, customers and outside sources. Structuring the knowledge, up to a third of the time in a KM project should be spent on design and testing. This will reduce risks in developing a solution that doesn t meet standards. Information accuracy and making sure that it is up-to-date, by allowing users to comment or critique will allow for better accuracy. Making sure that staff is trained in the use of KMSs, thus making sure they fully comprehend the full extent of the system. Regarding the KMS development there are more processes to cover, these processes are as follows: Build a call centre intranet, therefore easing communication between all departments and keeping the call centre up-to-date by introducing multiple types of information, i.e. training material, policies and procedures, help desk resources, etc. Knowledge repository, an online information storage that is available to all members, well-structured, easy and efficient to use, comprehensive and correctly maintained. Develop online solutions, allows for better integration into a single seamless solution. Also allows for thin client technology. Effective searching and browsing will shorten time that staff needs to find correct material. Analyze staff usage, can help with finding missing information and locating frequently asked questions. Basically what is and what is not valuable. Feedback, thus making available a single point of contact where staff can comment on the KMS, what is missing, what is good, etc. Staff reacts better when listened to and that motivates them to keep information up-to-date. Develop custom KM solutions, little applets that help with the day-to-day work. Integrate CRM and KMS, connecting information from both to be integrated. This would be like connecting escalation in the CRM system with the KM processes and grouping KMS information according to the CRM grouping. Integrate help desk and KMS, involves that most help desks use call logging to track status of reported problems and issues. This information can then be used to create solution for the KMS. Integrate IVR and KMS, Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems are often used to front the help desk. By using the information from this system and information from the KMS it is possible to ensure consistency between the two. Also the IVR gives data that can be analyzed further to improve the KMS. Customer-facing resources, covers the fact that call centres now handle online queries and thus need to manage an additional workload. By publishing 11

18 FAQs for customers, making sure online information is correct and developing standard responses for a range of or website queries, this workload can be managed better. This should all be based on the same information that is used by call centre staff. The author then gives his conclusions which are that by using KM tools and approaches it is possible to get the information to call centre staff more quickly. Making sure that knowledge is accurate, up-to-date, easy to use and comprehensive is also very important. This article is very helpful as it covers a lot of the points that are necessary when creating a KMS. He covers each point with a practical idea so that the reader understands better what it involves. There are a few problems with this article. Firstly he switches between call centre and help desk quite frequently, never explaining properly if they are the same thing or if there is a difference. In this article the KMS and IT system come across as the same thing, which is not the case as mentioned in the KMS chapter. The culture part of the KM area is always quite relevant and he touches on the subject of staff involvement in this regards Knowledge management-centric help desk: Specifications and performance evaluation This article is more quantitative, than the previous one, and aims to show the benefits of using knowledge management-centric help desk over using the agentcentric help desk by using statistical data gathered from a simulation study. Agent-centric help desk: The general idea here is that all knowledge resides in each agent of the help desk. This can be personal instruction stored electronically, as tacit knowledge, printed documentation and access to the Internet. No knowledge is shared and different agents solving the same kind of problems often have to spend the same amount researching a solution to a problem even though someone has already searched and found the solution. Therefore the responsibility of finding the correct information or knowledge is on each agent. Knowledge management-centric help desk: This approach entails sharing knowledge between agents in order to achieve faster and more efficient work processes. It proposes using a KMS as an intermediary between the help desk agents and all information, data and knowledge sources. With the KMS as an intermediary it would aid in the knowledge acquisition and work as a single uniform interface. The interface is the bridge that connects all sources, both internal and outside, allowing for a speedier way to locate relevant knowledge no matter how it is organized at its location. The KMS that the authors use is designed to support both tacit and explicit knowledge by integrating several technologies including group-ware, information retrieval and document management. An important element of this KMS is how knowledge access is organized. In this case it is organized according to a contextspecific to the help desk and how its agents perceive the problem domain. The prototype illustrates a split view where the search criteria are on the left hand side of the window and the knowledge sources are on the right hand side. The knowledge management-centric approach can aid with achieving organizational learning. Problems are a part of the organizational memory and thus available to all other agents. 12

19 The article goes on further to describe an agent-centric help desk in a fortune 500 company that goes from a single agent to a multi agent department. The company aids the evolution of the help desk by implementing a computer telephony software package, called Remedy, in order to better track job tickets and provide better service. The article also covers a basic flow of problems through the help desk and how they are escalated in the system and given priority according to a defined criterion. Data was collected, using the Remedy software that the company used, for the agent-centric help desk approach. Interviewing management and the help desk agents gave them their key performance indicators, which were: Number of calls received versus number of calls abandoned Number of calls resolved at first contact Average time to resolve a problem at each level. These points were then used as building blocks for the simulation model. This simulation model is used for the data acquisition for the knowledge managementcentric approach. The simulation model was run with different replication numbers in order to verify that it worked under different conditions. After that a statistical testing was used to validate the model. The results were clear cut. They showed a significant advantage of the knowledge management-centric approach. For low priority calls in the system, times were improved by almost 60%, medium priority almost 65% and high priority close to 52%. The system also showed a 19% higher throughput (total number of calls resolved within a certain time period). This indicates a possible cost benefits as more calls can be resolved at the 1 st support level, which usually has staff that are at a lower salary level than higher support level staff. This approach also results in quicker problem solving, which is very important in a business unit. The article finally concludes that they have given a specification of the knowledge-centric system for the help desk. A system that incorporates different aspects of other available systems, it is centralized, integrated into the help desk process and therefore avoids the use of specialized personnel to update the knowledge base. Because all knowledge goes through the system it becomes available to all help desk agents and because all the knowledge is captured by the organization and by the individuals it promotes organizational learning. It also concludes that there are issues that they do not cover as they cannot be addressed in a computer simulated scenario, such as cultural issues. This article gives a very good perspective with regards to the different approaches of help desk management and how the knowledge management-centric one is clearly the better of the two discussed. It helps with in facets of selling the idea to organizations, with figures, even though it is simulated data. The authors also recognize that they could not account for the culture variable in their research and that it is a significant aspect. There is a lot of data and tables to illustrate the results, which in turn require a little bit of knowledge of statistics. The practical illustration of the company allows for the reader to get a better understanding of the research. This article underlines certain problems with current practices, like case based systems, and aims to create a solution so that these problems can be avoided. The proposed problems and solutions comply with this project s issues. 13

20 3.4 The Company Þekking (Thekking) was originally the IT department (started in 1974) of a retail and wholesale company (KEA). In November of 1999 this department was made into an IT service company in Akureyri. In May 2001 it merged with a company called Tristan ehf. and their base of operation became the headquarters in the capital city area. Together these companies formed one company under the name Þekking ehf. and now provide service for IT solutions for the entire country (Iceland). The name Þekking means knowledge and just underlines that knowledge is very important in the company s policy. Þekking is one of the leading local players in the industry. The company has about 50 employees in 5 departments and is based at two locations, Akureyri (in the north) and Kópavogur (in the south). The customer service is one of the most important facets of the company. It has 3 levels of support, the first being the help desk where companies, that have a certain support contract, can call in, agents will try to solve their problems and if that is not possible they will make sure that the problem goes to the next level. The second level is the technical agents. These agents solve problems that the help desk cannot solve along with doing the onsite work. The third level is then the specialized department which handles more complex issues such as programming, network issues, database problems etc. 3.5 Author reflective bias I want to give you a better view of my background and that will hopefully allow you to understand better my views on this project and its scope. I have been working at the Þekking help desk for over two years now. Currently I am on a one year leave, due to my studies, but intend to go back when my studies are finished. I have a multitude of duties there which range from taking calls, assessing severity of problems, attempting to fix the problems, finding the correct technician to solve the problems and producing a job ticket for higher level of service. This includes problems with both software and hardware. Before working at Þekking I worked at a computer retailer as a salesman, customer service agent and technician, for over two and a half years. I have handled customers in every aspect of the job. I have also been working privately as a computer technician, helping the everyday man with his PC related problems. With over six years of experience in customer service, on both ends of the table, I have felt that there is often a lack of knowledge when dealing with problems. As a customer I often feel that solutions take too long, and considering I know what they have to go through to find the solution I usually give them more than enough time. Sometimes I get agents that have no idea what I am talking about or have very little knowledge about the kind of problems they should be able to solve. As an agent myself I sometimes feel that the environment I work in can be rather unorganized, looking through multiple documents to find the right solution is often too time consuming. The KM field of study is something that intrigues me quite a bit. It can be implemented in so many ways to help each and every situation. I understand that I will be looking at it from the Help Desk Agent point of view and that there might be some ideas that need to be looked at even after I have dismissed them and that is why I will try to engage outside opinions to help with the adaption of the system. I also want to see what happens when KM is implemented in this environment. Statistical data is helpful for the justification for management but, as a help desk agent, I want to see how this affects me and my work environment. 14

21 4 Working environment Imagine that you are a customer with the best support contract available and that you sell furniture. You have a problem with your retail software and you are unable to make a receipt for your customer. You call the help desk, first they take your information, then they access the client database to find your branch and the ip address for your computer in order to connect through remote control software, next they try to find a documented solution to your problem, given they do not know it by heart, and finally they attempt to fix your problem. One of two things happens next, either they solve the problem or they escalate the problem to the appropriate department by creating a job ticket. If the severity of the problem is high they will follow up on the job ticket to make sure it is addressed in the correct time frame. This is an example the working environment (see figure 4-1 for workflow). This project focuses on the help desk aspect Figure 4-1: Current work flow The help desk, which is used in this project, consists of four agents and one department manager, who is a normal agent but also does more specialized work. The agents also keep a watchful eye on monitoring systems and take appropriate actions if something fails. These systems are meant to catch errors in a number of IT solutions provided by the company, i.e. hardware, inventory, ordering and sales reports. The reception also falls under this department; receptionists answer calls to the main 15

22 phone number and the overflow trying to reach the direct number. Receptionists only take down basic information and/or forward callers to the appropriate department. Because some of the company s customers are rivals the help desk is divided into groups when it comes to these customers, this is hereafter referred to as rivalry. If an agent is assigned to a certain customer he can only do very basic work for certain other customers, their rivals, due to the rivalry. 4.1 Data The analysis of the help desk is primarily based on the author s knowledge of the environment. In order to confirm that this knowledge was correct, and things had not changed significantly, two questionnaires were sent to the help desk, one for the manager and the other for the agents. The questions for the agents and the reason for them were: Describe your work flow, starting from answering a call until you hang up. Describe for both problems you can solve and those that you cannot. o This question was meant to insure that the procedures had not changed. It is also the base for the workflow image (see figure 4-1) Do you find it important that other agents share problem solutions? o This question was to engage the culture in the department. To see if there the sharing mentality was present and what agent s expected of each other. Do you feel you lose your specialty if you share your knowledge? o This question was also to engage the culture in the department. This was more focused on whether they thought they could weaken their position within the company if they shared their knowledge. Do you think the help desk could solve more problems if they had access to the right knowledge? o This was used to engage the potential of the department, the agents point of view. How many different programs do you use on a daily basis? o To get a better overview of what kind of programs they used and thus seeing what they used them for. Do you think something could be done to make it simpler? o Engage the agents view if the current resources could be simpler, easier to use and such. If you could change one thing what would that be? o Engage what is the most significant aspect of their job they would like to change and if that view was the same as the author s view. 16

23 The other questionnaire was sent to the department manager, his questions and the reasons behind them were: What resources do agents have access to in their day-to-day work? o Get an overview of the resource available to the agents. What are the agents responsibilities? o Compare the managerial view of the agents responsibilities to what they actually do. Do you feel that the help desk can solve more problems if they have access to the right knowledge? o This question was to engage his view of the help desk s potential. Describe the department s atmosphere/culture. o As a manager he keeps an eye on how the agents interact and thus has a good overview of the culture and atmosphere. Are changes in the department discussed with the staff before being implemented? o Checking his personal philosophy towards staff influence in decision making. Other issues were discussed in correspondence or phone calls. (Answers from questionnaire see Appendix A). 4.2 Analysis The job ticket software, CRM base and part of the knowledge base, is all in Lotus Notes. Agents use Microsoft Word, Microsoft OneNote and/or pen and paper to document their work. The instruction, or problem solution, knowledge base consists of Microsoft Word files stored on a file server and organized by a predefined document key system. Each company has its own folder; this folder has subfolders containing relevant information for sales department, support and contacts, each folder is then accessible only to those that need the information. This information is linked in Lotus Notes to a certain degree. When the work day is done, each staff member is supposed to record his/her work into a time journal system. This system is used to bill customers and to track work hours of staff for salary purposes. Most work, at this help desk, is done through remote control software. Agents are encouraged to record solution to problems they encounter so that other agents can use the information should they encounter the same problem. The processes of recording these problem solutions is; typing them up in Microsoft Word, placing them in the appropriate folder, linking them into Lotus Notes and inform the agents. This is a process that today is outside the normal day-to-day routine and therein lays the problem. There is a good sharing culture within this help desk as agents are not afraid of losing their specialties if they share their knowledge and actively try to share their knowledge. Agents actually want the company to do well and realize that in order for that to happen every agent has to be able to solve as many problems as possible. Agents are all in agreement that the help desk can solve more problems than it does now. But for that to happen the technicians need to share more of their knowledge, which is currently limited due to a high workload. There is 17

24 definite potential for the agents to solve more than they do today. The challenge is how to capture the knowledge of the technicians and system admins. When there are going to be changes in the help desk department the manager actively discusses them with the agents before implementing as he feels that it works better to get their feedback. González et al. (2005) define two different approaches to the help desk environment the agent-centric help desk and the KM-centric help desk. The agentcentric approach is where all knowledge resides with the agent, in documented form and/or personal experience. On the other hand the KM-centric approach is where knowledge resides in a knowledge repository and all knowledge sources are accessible through a single interface. The current approach in our environment does not fit into either approach but instead is somewhat a mixture of these two approaches and will be referred to as a sharing-centric help desk. This sharing-centric approach entails that the knowledge is both tacit and explicit; it resides in a repository of a sort and as personal documents. There is a sharing mindset within the organization and members realize that their specialties do not rely on them having to hoard their knowledge but as being assigned to service certain clients in greater detail than other agents. 4.3 Problems Problems with the current environment are largely related to the knowledge base. First of all it takes too long to search for solutions, browsing through folders or using the somewhat flawed search function in Windows. There are even some solutions that agents only have in their possession and are not on the server. The tacit knowledge is plentiful and communication between agents is good, yet it can become frustrating when people ask the same questions often. Another point is that this knowledge is less accessible when the agent, which has the knowledge, is on vacation, sick or even leaves the company. If this knowledge could be codified and placed in a database it would both increase efficiency and ease frustrations. The available solutions also need reviewing; some are rarely used and might not still be applicable while others have very confusing titles. There are also some solutions that apply to multiple clients and these are placed in different folders, a sort of applies to all section. The sheer number of different kinds of software that agents have to use every day is also a little hindering. If they have to locate information about something they have done in the past it requires too much manual searching and it takes time switching between different software solutions to do a job. There is also the fact that agents do not have access to the work descriptions from other agents, aside from the job tickets which are not always created. All this was confirmed when agents were asked what they would change if they could change one thing, they were unanimously in agreement that the knowledge base needs a rehaul. They want to be able to have a more accessible knowledge base, which covers everything from problem solutions to customer information. There also needs to be a process for the knowledge base and a sort of content quality control. Current statistical data available covers answered calls (%), missed calls (%), average waiting time of client and an efficiency rating. Although this is helpful information it is very limited and does not provide management with many helpful selling points for prospective clients. 18

25 5 The Knowledge Management System The KMS is broken down into three categories, knowledge base, activities and technology. Knowledge base covers multiple aspects of the stored knowledge, like structure. Activities focus on how agents tacit knowledge can be captured and disseminated as well as agents participation in maintaining the knowledge base. Technology focuses on how to build a system that takes into account both aforementioned categories as well as every day work processes, access to knowledge base and electronic interaction between agents, to name a few. The core categories of this KMS are based on Knowledge management for call centres by James Roberts and each category is then further developed using research papers, adjusted to fit the environment. Each of the categories will be covered more extensively in this chapter. Finally we will cover a few issues that also need attention to facilitate the success of the project. 5.1 Knowledge base Constructing the knowledge base is a key element in the process of implementing a KM project, without a knowledge base there is no project. User involvement is important to make the outcome usable (Levy, 2009). Engaging help desk agents in the development of the knowledge base helps to make sure that it fulfills requirements. These are the people that will be using the knowledge base on a day-to-day basis; they know best what should populate it and how it should be accessible. These aspects are based on Robertson (2002) paper and validated by Kiczo s (2001) work. 5.2 Activities Identify the required knowledge: Interview help desk agents, technicians, system admins, experts, etc. Evaluate what knowledge already exists and what is missing. Structure knowledge base: Make a knowledge map. Make prototypes and assess what fits the requirements best. Make sure knowledge is up-to-date: Put quality control into the hands of the agents. Assign knowledge managers that have a responsibility to maintain the content. Staff training: Make sure agents know how the system works. Make sure that instructions to the system are available to agents even after a training period is over, i.e. manual and/or videos. Tacit knowledge is something that is often neglected as it is by its nature hard to document (Desouza & Vance, 2003). Therefore there is a need to have activities that facilitate the transformation of tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge. These activities are inspired by Nonaka&Takeuchi s (1995) SECI model. Another facet to keep in mind is to maintain the learning culture of the group. This could be achieved with statistical data, encouragement and by setting goals, which if met can be awarded (Zhang et al, 2010; Chen&Xu, 2010). Have a meeting once a month, or every other week, to discuss the current status of the help desk, discuss knowledge base issues (adding, updating and managing), review statistics and set goals. 19

26 Have meetings with a customer s system admin to discuss progress and other issues. Develop an intranet forum so that agents can address problems or air their ideas on a day-to-day basis. Regular reviews on old and little used knowledge. 5.3 Technology In this day and age technology has become a very big part of our life and even a bigger part of our work. It can be tricky to choose the right software to suit your needs. Information technology is a very powerful tool for KM and can be a make-orbreak issue. A delicate balance regarding technology reliance is important as over reliance can result in project failure (Chua&Lam, 2005). There are multiple issues that need to be kept in mind whilst selecting the appropriate software solution. These issues are, but not limited to: Maintainability: Is the software complete or are there still issues that are being addressed by its vendor? Is it easy to update, upgrade and sustain? Cost: How much does it cost? Is it a onetime payment or are there future costs? Does it require new hardware? Service: Does the vendor supply good service? Do you have staff that is familiar with the software? Usability: Is it user friendly, easily understood and does it fulfill the requirements? Development: Is this a final version or is it under constant development? Can it be developed further in-house? Setting requirements for these issues is a good start for a checklist to use on software candidates. The system needs more requirements though. Keep in mind that previous categories require that you can structure your own database, have access to an intranet, are able to gather statistical data on the system s usage and it should also allow users to provide feedback on the knowledge. Yet another issue is to integrate the CRM into the system, so that agents have access to more detailed knowledge. The main goal should be to try and find a centralized solution, one interface that connects to all required knowledge sources. Get staff feedback on possible candidates; they are the users that have to use it every day. 5.4 Lessons learned Since emphasizing so much on having a learning culture it would be sensible to consider lessons learned on other KM projects. Although the material researched usually covers KM projects that are implemented throughout the entire organizations, and not just a single department, there are things that project leaders should keep in mind. One element is a dedicated management. If management does not fully support the project it can easily be derailed (Chua&Lam, 2005). Culture is also very important and things like politics, sharing knowledge and user s perceived image need to be monitored (Chua&Lam, 2005). This includes making sure that people want to share their knowledge, that it isn t a bad thing to access the knowledge base to get knowledge on an issue and that the success of a certain department is not bad for 20

27 others. Chua&Lam (2005) also identified failure factors in project management, things like: User involvement: Members of the organization do not participate in the project and their knowledge needs are not identified. Technical and business expertise: Not enough staff with the technical and business expertise to maintain the project. Conflict management: Conflict between members is not handled or not handled correctly. Rollout strategy: Lack of a rollout strategy. No specific way of testing or initiating the project. Project cost: Costs exceed the original estimates. Project evaluation: Progress of the project isn t documented and therefore no way to point out successes or failures. Involvement of external consultants: Over reliance on external consultant and/or involving too many of them resulting in confusion. Not all these factors are applicable to every situation; you need to be sure to account for the correct ones. These lessons learned are issues that project leaders need to keep in mind as they do not directly make their way into the software itself. 21

28 6 KMS results and the prototype The KMS above was sent to the help desk department manager for review and study. The author and department manager went through the system to work out requirements and produce a prototype. This prototype was then presented to the agents for their review and study along with other changes. This chapter will cover how each facet of the system was used and what was the result. 6.1 The knowledge base The help desk has a very good database of instructions regarding problem solutions. There is some knowledge that could be added to the database but that will require participation from the technicians. This database is already structured and it was agreed that this structure suited quite well as a base and only needed to be slightly modified. As mentioned before, in chapter 4, the structure of the database is based on a predefined document key system. The core of the structure is based on each client/customer and then all material for the help desk is in a sub category called instructions. The change would entail that each piece of knowledge would be associated with client, branch and problem type. This would make it easier to find the appropriate knowledge by narrowing down each parameter in the system and allow for knowledge to be associated to multiple clients without being copied, placed in multiple locations or placed in a certain applies to all category. Agents are assigned to groups which have full access to certain clients and basic access to their rivals. This serves as the base when it comes to assigning agents as knowledge supervisors to clients. Clients will be assigned at least two supervisors where one is a help desk agent and the other is a technician or the client s system admin. This results in an author and reviewer relationship, allowing for increased quality control. The knowledge base will also hold instructions on how the system itself works; this will include both an online manual and video instructions. The purpose of this is to aid with training of the staff, providing both better and faster training, and easing workload on other agents. Like other material this will need to evolve as the system does and when new features become available within the system they should be accompanied with instructions to be placed in this knowledge base. 6.2 Activities The help desk department already has a monthly department meeting. These meetings cover overview of answered calls and missed calls, feedback from clients, things that need improving and acknowledgement of good work. These meetings will now undergo a few changes to accommodate issues regarding the knowledge base and system in general. To be added are short reports from knowledge supervisors, more statistical data from the system, important issues raised on the forums and the setting of goals for the coming month. Meetings with a client s system admin are scheduled two to three times a year, depending on the size of the client s company. The knowledge supervisor and help desk manager attend these meetings with the system admin. This will serve to aid and/or increase communication regarding the problems that occur and the things that work well. 22

29 The company has been developing Microsoft SharePoint as their intranet. This allows for forums, which are being used but could be put to more use especially with regard to knowledge issues. Encouraging discussion both on the forums and just in general, like on coffee breaks, will allow for tacit knowledge to surface. Agents will then have to recognize that this is knowledge that needs to be documented. Technicians are given a special place within this forum to get feedback on whether certain problems can be solved by the help desk, given that the agents have access to the right knowledge. Counters are placed on the instructions to keep tabs on their age and how long it has been since it was last implemented. If an instruction is not used for six months its supervisor is sent an alarm/a message so it gets reviewed and when an instruction reaches the age of two and a half review process is also instigated. These reviews will determine if the instructions are still applicable, if they need to be updated or if it can be removed from the database. If it is not removed the counter is reset and the alarm/message will trigger next after one year, or six months if they have not reached the age of two and a half years. 6.3 Technology One of the key factors when it came to choosing the software solution was trying to minimize the number of concurrently used software. The idea was having a solution that could provide the agent with as many features as possible, within a single interface, when agents are working on a call/job. Another quite important factor was flexibility, the ability to change or develop further without too extravagant costs. Due to such specific requirements and preferences it was decided to build the system as a website. It will allow for great flexibility, in-house development and close collaboration with users. The company has programmers familiar with website development and there is also a plethora of website developers that could be contracted to build parts of or the system entirely. This will also allow for a connection to the intranet forum, RSS feeds and have a centralized interface. In-house development and usability were considered the most important factors. The reason behind that was that it was foreseen that the system needs to evolve quickly as requirements change and with good usability the system s usage is will be higher. The system will only be accessible on the local network to ensure security. The idea here is that this system can grow and evolve as requirements will change, much like other KM solutions (Levy, 2009). 6.4 The prototype system The proposed system is made up of 7 views, a homepage, call page, reports, knowledge base, client page, stats page and how to/help page. This system also records its usage for statistical purposes. As it is web based it can be integrated into the Share-Point system. Detailed description of each page is covered in the following subchapters Home page The home page will hold important messages for the agents, i.e. dates of staff meetings, upcoming holidays, latest topics on forums, messages from management, etc. The flow of the system will always bring the agent back to this page when finished working in the other views. From this home page the agent will navigate to the subpages depending on what he wants to do. 23

30 6.4.2 Call page Figure 6-1 : Home page view This view will be the primary focus of the system. This page is used to record information about a client, provide the agent with knowledge from the knowledge base based on the information and record the agents work. The view is split into 5 boxes. The agent starts by setting the time the phone call started, and then chooses the appropriate client, branch and problem type. This will allow him to choose from available problem solutions. If there is no solution available for the particular problem he checks the appropriate box or he checks another box if the solution available does not work. When a certain problem solution is selected it appears in the adjacent box and the problem solution s counter is reset when the submit button is pressed. In a box below, the solution text, the last work done for the client regarding the problem type appears. Displaying known solutions and the last thing done allows for a comparison to make sure that information provided is correct. Then there is one box for displaying information about the particular branch, things like store manager, system admin, primary technician, ip addresses for workstations and other hardware. All this allows for a mixture of case based solutions, specially codified solutions, equipment and CRM. Finally there is a box where the agent writes down the problems description and his work. When the agent presses the submit button all the information accumulated is committed to the database and will serve as the last work done for the next time a similar or same problem occurs. Ultimately, the necessary information would be pushed into the time journal system automatically when submitted. 24

31 6.4.3 Reports page Figure 6-2 : Call page view The reports page will allow agents to retrieve reports on their work. The agent will specify a certain time period and the system will display a report showing date, time, type, client, branch and description. This page will also allow for a narrower search in case agents want to see what they have done for a specific company and even a specific branch of that company. The report can also be printed out as soon as it has been generated. The agents can use the reports to fill in their time journal, compare them to information in the time journal system or review to see if there is anything missing. Figure 6-3 : Reports page view 25

32 6.4.4 Knowledge base page The knowledge base page is the access point, for agents, to the knowledge base. Here they record new, update or delete problem solutions. Agents will have some options here. If there is a problem solution that applies to all clients they only need to select the problem type. Also if the solution works for all branches of the company they only need to select the company and problem type. Finally if the problem only applies to a specific branch of a specific company they select from all drop down menus. When agents select from the drop down menus it populates the list of available solutions. In order to avoid accidental editing or deleting the agent has to check the change/update box to have the possibility to select a specific solution. When a solution is updated, its last time used counter is reset. At any time the user can clear the form and/or navigate to the home page Clients page Figure 6-4 : Knowledge base view The clients page is a part of the knowledge base as well as part of the CRM. This page will hold information about the company and its branches. The view is split up into three columns. The first column contains general information on the company, things like name, company number (social security or ID), system admin, primary technician and address. The mid column holds information on the company s branches, things like address, phone number, manager s phone number, name of the store manager and . Below there is a list of these branches where the agent can choose to edit or delete each one. The third and final column holds information on the selected branch, things like name and ip address of all hardware. Each column has a checkbox that is used to indicate that the information is new and should be added to the database, not updated. 26

33 6.4.6 Stats page Figure 6-5 : Clients page view As mentioned before the system record its usage for statistical purposes and therefore a stats page was a logical step. The stats page is primarily used for retrieving statistical data for department meetings. The possibility of displaying simple statistics about the user that requests this statistical data could also be developed. By selecting certain criteria, from a user specified range of dates, a statistical report can be generated. This functionality is mainly conceived for the management How to/help page Figure 6-6 : Stats page view The how to/help page is primarily conceived as a training page. This page will hold all the training information on how to use the system itself. All the material will be broken down into categories so that it could also be used by agents that just need a reminder of how a certain feature works or to learn how new features/functions work. The idea is to have both text and instruction videos. 27

34 7 From the Old to the New After all the work done so far, what are the changes? Imagine again that you are the customer with the best possible support contract and you sell furniture. Same situation again, you have a problem making a receipt for your customer. You call the help desk, they take your information, input it into the new system, they get available solutions immediately and all information about your particular branch, then they access your computer and try the available solutions. Again one of two things happens, either they have a workable solution and fix your problem or they escalate the problem to a technician by making a job ticket. If the critical level is high the agent will follow up on the job ticket to make sure it is completed within the correct time frame. So what is the difference between this scenario and the one before? First of all, instead of having to search through a folder database after taking your information, the agent is getting possible solutions whilst recording your information into the system. Secondly this is all being recorded to make sure that if this problem is solvable by a help desk agent he will be able to solve it should it reoccur and thus will not have to escalate it to the technician (see figure 7-1 for workflow). Figure 7-1 : New workflow 28

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